


gift

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Genre: F/M, Help me galactic Jesus, I just can't, I just cannot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21942793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: Come home, Ben.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	gift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [insideimfeelindirty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/insideimfeelindirty/gifts).



> Merry Christmas to my love, to my Star Wars women and, above all, to Matt the Radar Technician.

Here you are, in my arms, death thundering over our heads, and I don’t feel you breathing. I’m not afraid. I’m still breathing, so you’ll breathe again. I’ll spend these moments between with the weight of you, here with your humanity while your spirit waits. Just a little longer, while I think.

While I breathe.

Here we are, at the end, where our names no longer matter. Places, faces, knights, black armour, black acts; darkness. I who lived so long in the darkness am pierced by light, run through by it, healed and made new by it. My father’s face. My mother’s voice. You. Who I was and who I am run together like fresh water and blood.

You are still warm.

Take it –

Take it all.

You’re stronger than I am, you were all along. I have to dig for it, to curl fingers and knuckles and fists into the metal of my deepest being and find what there is to give you: so much. Far more than I ever expected. Rich, golden, flooding light. I see things, a sweet-faced woman with sweet brown eyes. A boy with sand-coloured hair. A mother, another mother. The bright eyes and sharp tongue of a princess dressed in white. The easy shrug, the roll of the shoulders, the hands on the controls, the muscle jumping in the jaw. I never knew them like this, but I know them now.

_Come home, Ben._

I’m coming.

Her hand resting on my head in the summer. How old am I, four? Five? When he kissed her lightly as if he would kiss her forever, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. I am lifted into so many arms and put down again, the priceless child who promises so much. I’ll fail them all, I know that now. I’ve failed them all until now, when I choose be true. I will be true to you, and make it right again.

I will be true to you forever.

If you had always been mine, I could not love you more. If you’d come to me freely, in the rage of the sea, in the silence after the massacre – but you didn’t come. You stayed behind, stood before me, stayed the power in that small, rough hand, stayed the course. My life flows into you and leaves me grey, but you begin to bloom. This is not the pain of passing, or parting, not the bright white heat of grief or the filthy glory of battle. It doesn’t hurt me, and you stir.

Oh, your face, surrounded by balance and the humming of the universe.

Oh, your mouth and the tips of your fingers and the tickle of your damp hair.

Do you see the light? I’m all but drowning in it. You reflect it back, light from a star stretching out to the surface of a yearning planet. Was that mine, that light? That light that’s your light now, drenching and holy like the sun, the certainty that I will go warmly and softly when I go.

Do you see it?

The salt on your lips, the salt on your eyelids, the salt of the sea forever an inverse reminder of the girl who grew like a wildflower in the desert. My counterpart and my ruin and my everything, the continuum and the wreck of you and me and every other spinning soul who lived and died so we could stand together, long pre-destined.

A galaxy filled with stars, and life blazing in your eyes.

_Come home, Ben._

But I am home, at last.


End file.
